I Played More Than 20 Metroidvanias This Year Other Than Silksong,...

Already unspooled Silksong? Here's six other platformers exploring new concepts.

2025 was the year of the metroidvania, no question. While every genre saw a whole range of gems landing this year, fans of exploration-heavy platformers were positively feasting, with the centerpiece at the table being the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong. A massive, polished, smartly designed and pleasantly familiar game that saw little need to uproot the first game's well-tested formula.

The now-ubiquitous portmanteau we use to describe the genre is, in itself, a reference to it being fertile ground for cross-pollinating ideas. Metroid's exploration dovetailed nicely with Castlevania's gothic stylings and Symphony Of The Night's surprisingly in-depth RPG elements, which Hollow Knight dials down the in favour of death mechanics and boss runbacks from Dark Souls. In recent years, we've seen plenty more experiments, with last year's Animal Well winning no shortage of praise by trading combat for ARG-adjacent layers of puzzling and cipher-cracking.

And so here I am to present a handful of picks from 2025's bumper crop that bring distinct, fresh flavors to that familiar core of running, jumping and exploring. I've taken a good few bites out of at least two dozen open-plan platformers (shout-outs to the woefully underappreciated Shadow Labyrinth), and have a handful of especially creative picks for those looking for something to refresh the palate, or at least bulk out your holiday Steam wishlist, especially if Silksong left you with a craving for something new.

Ol' Babushka might have been able to run and jump like Samus Aran in her youth, but she's not much for agility these days. Or combat. What she has is a broom (good for whacking stuff, and dusting) and an aging mind capable of holding a whole two spells. But you'd be amazed at what two spells can do, combined carefully and with knowledge of what all the strange critters, glitches and objects do in this short-but-sweet puzzle explorathon.

Need to climb out of a pit and cross a chasm? Whack a worm to make it build a tower of earth. Then use the Ladder spell to walk up the side of it, then switch to the Air Walk spell halfway up so that you can hobble through the sky. But if you need a Feather Fall or the Ghost spell to touch deadly things, you'll have to forget something you were just relying on, and get up to some downright game-breaking shenanigans if you want every hidden collectible.

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Source: PC Gamer